Progress report

Here is our progress as of August 24, 2016.

	Project 1	Project 2 - USCT
	n = 8,500	n = 4,500
Total soldiers complete	3877	1377
Soldiers completed during last week	45	58
Soldiers w/o children (to be removed from sample)	398	238
% of completed soldiers w/o children	10.3	17.3
Soldiers with children complete	3479	1139
% with children complete	40.9	25.3

Death cause in the Mil Info

Occasionally, the only place an individual's death cause can be found is in the Mil Info. Sometimes the death cause information in the Mil Info cannot be read because it's really long and doesn't fit. When this happens, please email Coralee, Betsy or Chris (please begin with Coralee). They can go into the database and find the complete death cause for you. I've added their email addresses to the Google doc with inputter email addresses that you should all have access to.

New goal

As you can see from the recent progress report, we reached our goal of completing 1,000 Project 2 soldiers with children before the end of August. Great job! Now it's time to set a new goal.

Let's try to get 55% of Project 1 completed by January 1, 2017. That means we will complete 4,675 soldiers with children. To accomplish this, we will have to input 65 soldiers per week. This is an ambitious goal, but I think you can do it.

With that in mind, I will be changing the allocation of assignments between the two projects. A few of you will be left exclusively on Project 2 (we still have to get it done). Many of you will work entirely on Project 1. Some of you will continue to switch back and forth. As you complete your current assignments, don't be surprised if you get a big Project 1 assignment.

Good luck!

Punctuation policy reminder

Sometimes punctuation causes problems in the inputting program, such as preventing data from saving. So, here is a reminder of our punctuation policy for inputting.

No Punctuation Marks except the comma in the name field, and periods, slashes (NOT back slashes) and semi colons in remarks or cause of death.  Never use apostrophes, pound signs and ampersands (&).

Progress report as of August 17

Here is our progress as of Wednesday, August 17. I provide this chart to our Principal Investigator every week. In order for the chart to be accurate you MUST update me on your progress EVERY WEDNESDAY BY NOON eastern time. If you work in the office, and keep your input log up to date, then that's all you need to do. If you work away from the office, you have two options:

• Email me your current, updated log every Wednesday by noon
• Share your log using Google sheets (if you choose this option, you must keep it updated online)

This is mandatory. There are a few of you who never send me updates. From now on, you MUST update me every week.

Now, here is the progress report.

	Project 1	Project 2 - USCT
	n = 8,500	n = 4,500
Total soldiers complete	3832	1319
Soldiers completed during last week	32	55
Soldiers w/o children (to be removed from sample)	396	230
% of completed soldiers w/o children	10.3	17.4
Soldiers with children complete	3436	1089
% with children complete	40.4	24.2

When the soldier and his family live outside the US

Recently, we had a soldier from Ireland. He was never found in the United States census and his children were all born and lived in Ireland. It was not uncommon for foreign-born soldiers to return to their countries of birth after the war.

Here are some things to keep in mind if you encounter this situation:

• Make sure you enter ALL the soldiers children on the grid. Even if you never find them on a census manuscript, you need to add them to the data. Add the spouse as well (if she had children with the soldier)
• If you have evidence that the soldier, his spouse, or his children were living outside the US during a given census year, then mark that decade on the grid with black Xs (not searched) instead of yellow Xs (not found). If they live outside the country, then they are not at risk to be found in the census.
• Even if they live outside the country, go ahead and search for death information, just in case. Family Search is a good place to do this because you can access international records. If you don't find death information for the soldier, his spouse, or his children, mark the death column with a yellow X.

Any questions?

Congratulations!

Congratulations to the following people. They were the first five people to respond that they'd reread the post about death causes. Several of you still haven't responded (and I'm not just talking about the people who are on vacation).

These people get to add 30 minutes to their next time sheet, because they were the first to respond.

1. Ellie
2. Barbara
3. Grant
4. Michelle
5. Jessie

Soldiers from the pilot project

I've notice that I've been assigning out a lot of Ohio (RecId begins with 24) soldiers lately. Some of these soldiers might have been input in the pilot project. If you have a soldier that looks like he is partially or entirely complete, you might have a pilot soldier. If this happens, please do the following:

• Check the work that is already input and bring it up to our current standard.
• This might include households for the soldier and his children
• Complete work that needs to be done.

A lot of these soldiers and their kids might be missing the best death information. When the pilot was done, there was less information available, and we have changed the screens to collect more data. Please make sure you update it.

Progress report as of August 10

Here is our progress report for August 10, 2016.

	Project 1	Project 2 - USCT
	n = 8,500	n = 4,500
Total soldiers complete	3800	1264
Soldiers completed during last week	48	65
Soldiers w/o children (to be removed from sample)	396	227
% of completed soldiers w/o children	10.4	18.0
Soldiers with children complete	3404	1037
% with children complete	40.0	23.0

Death causes, again

Recently input data is being cleaned, and the cleaners have noticed that many people are still being very creative with what they type for cause of death. Here are a couple of things to remember.

• If you can't read it, ask! If you're not sure what you see is a real word, look it up or ask!
• Please write "ARTERIOSCLEROSIS" on a Post-It note, and stick it to your monitor, or other place you will see it. This is very common. Many of you are coming up with new and exciting ways to spell it.

Please reread the post on death causes from September 8, 2015. Email me by the end of the day on Friday, August 12, 2016 to let me know that you have read the September post and that you understand it.

NBER working paper

A new NBER working paper has just been released. It is titled Persistent Social Networks: Civil War Veterans who Fought Together Co-Locate in Later Life. It was written using our EI data, and co-authored by our principal investigator, a senior investigator, and a member of our Vienna staff. You may read it here.

Here is the abstract from the website:

At the end of the U.S Civil War, veterans had to choose whether to return to their prewar communities or move to new areas. The late 19th Century was a time of sharp urban growth as workers sought out the economic opportunities offered by cities. By estimating discrete choice migration models, we quantify the tradeoffs that veterans faced. Veterans were less likely to move far from their origin and avoided urban immigrant areas and high mortality risk areas. They also avoided areas that opposed the Civil War. Veterans were more likely to move to a neighborhood or a county where men from their same war company lived. This co-location evidence highlights the existence of persistent social networks. Such social networks had long-term consequences: veterans living close to war time friends enjoyed a longer life.

Operations listed on death certificates

Sometimes operations are listed on death certificates without being the cause of death. Enter operations listed on the death certificate in the remarks. Please use the following format.

OPERATION: type of operation

For example

OPERATION: RESECTION OF CECUM

Death certificates

Please remember that sometimes documents have two pages. This is particularly important for death certificates. Since we are a study on health and aging, we want to collect death causes wherever possible. Always click to the next image and make sure there isn't a second page to the document. In this example, the inputter did not check for a second page, and missed multiple causes of death.

Sheet number

As your current work has been cleaned, we've noticed that many of you are still entering the "A" or "B" on the page number. Only enter these letters for the sheet number of the census manuscript. Please remove the letters from the page number for household 0.

July 2016 checking stats

In July, we checked 42 soldiers under our system. I've reviewed all of the checks, and I've tallied the number of differences. Some of these are errors, and some are judgment calls. Here are the categories and the total number of differences for each category. 

GRID Errors

• MILIN?/MAR? - 2
• Missing HH member - 7
• Duplicate people - 4
• Wrong person - 2
• Other - 0

Inferred Relationships

• Incorrect relationships - 9

Census Errors

• Name - 37
• Typo/Reading/Wrong - 110!
• State Code - 0
• Missing/Wrong URL - 0
• Missing data - 39
• Additional finds - 9
• Quality Code - 25

Death Errors

• Typo/Reading/Wrong - 14
• Missing data - 21
• Missing/Wrong URL/Source - 9
• Quality Code - 8
• Additional finds - 8

Tree Errors

• Missing/Incorrect information/relationships - 2

The total number of differences for all 42 soldiers is 306. This is 70 more differences than last month. Some differences/errors affect the data more than others. If we checked other pensions, we'd probably find similar differences.